


Dog Tags

by thunderstorm (ConsultingTimelordWizard)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alchera, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mass Effect 2, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 17:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12845604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingTimelordWizard/pseuds/thunderstorm
Summary: Shepard recieves Hackett's email about the original Normandy's wreck site. She really shouldn't have visited it alone.





	Dog Tags

**Author's Note:**

> mostly because i'm lazy and don't feel like reworking what i've written at the moment, this is slightly divergent in which shepard and garrus are together a little before the suicide mission--aka, shepard doesn't trust her entire crew just yet.

_ From: Admiral Hackett _

_  
__Commander Shepard:_

_  
__Our scans in the Amada system have turned up something we thought you should see: the final location of the wreckage of the SSV Normandy._

_  
__We thought this news might be important to you, but we also have an ulterior motive. The Alliance would like to honor the Normandy with a monument, to be built on the site of the ship's final resting place. We'd like to invite you to place the monument and be the first to walk on the site._

_  
__There are still 20 crew members unaccounted for from the attack on the Normandy. If you find any signs of these lost crewmen, we ask that you report to the Alliance so that those heroes' families might find some closure._

_  
__Godspeed to you, Commander._

 

Shepard stared at her terminal in the CIC for far too long, if the look Kelly Chambers was giving her was any indication. She wasn’t sure that she could bring herself to care much about what her crew thought at the moment, because all she could do was read Admiral Hackett’s email over and over again. They wanted her to go back to Alchera and place a monument at the wreckage--the same place she’d been spaced. The thought of going back made her heart pound, and Shepard closed the window with a lot of effort on her part. Could she do that? Could she relive the wreck that had killed her?

“Commander?”

Shepard’s head snapped up, and she met eyes with a concerned Kelly. Damn psychologists. “Yes, Kelly?”

“Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Shepard gave her a tight smile and nodded, turning her terminal off and turning her back to it. “I’m fine, Chambers. Don’t worry about me.”

“I think that’s the opposite of my job, ma’am.”

“Then turn your focus to the rest of the crew,” Shepard continued. “I’ll come to you if I need any help, I promise.”

Kelly still looked uncertain but nodded anyway, turning back to her workstation and letting Shepard go. Shepard let out a quiet, thankful sigh and turned to head to the bridge of the ship, stopping behind Joker’s chair and staring out at the stars that flew by as they passed. The window above her bed was enough to make her feel ready to panic, but admiring the view with Joker seemed to have the opposite affect on her; rather than reminding her of being spaced, Shepard felt at peace as the stars and planets flew by. She exhaled slowly and looked to her pilot, smirking when he turned around with an accusing expression.

“Commander, I think I should get some mirrors installed up here,” Joker said. “You know, so I can see when people are creeping behind me.”

“Aw, Joker. I’m sure EDI would let you know if you asked nicely.”

“Okay, yeah. Very funny.” Joker looked disgusted, and Shepard laughed out loud at the expression. Someday Joker would get used to the AI onboard their ship, but until then she could deal with his complaining. Lord knew she did during their hunt for Saren. “Anyway, how can I help you Commander?”

The relaxed feeling she’d started to feel vanished in a moment, and Shepard looked down at her feet. Joker would know the significance of Alchera the moment she mentioned it, and she knew neither of them were ready to talk about what happened fully. Shepard took pride in the fact that she knew her crew better than most commanding officers, and she’d come to think of Joker as a brother in the small time they knew one another. Joker would blame himself for her death, if his expression before she’d sent off his escape pod was any indication. Bringing up Alchera would be tough for both of them.

“I got an email from Admiral Hackett,” Shepard started, crossing her arms and frowning at the heat coming from the scars the cybernetics left along her face. A few deep breaths helped to stop the heat, and her eyes closed. Doctor Chakwas had said stress made her scars worse; unfortunately, going around with Cerberus and fighting Collectors from the moment she came back from the dead wasn’t the best for an unstressful life. “He said they want to put up a memorial for the crew of the SSV Normandy on Alchera.”

“Ah.” Joker shifted uncomfortably, and nodded. “He wants you to put it there, doesn’t he.”

“Nailed it.” Shepard sighed and sank into the copilot’s seat, head dropping into her hands. “He said I could be the first one to step on the grounds and whatever. He also wants me to collect the dogtags of the twenty who died.  _ Closure _ .”

“You know,” Joker started, scooting up in his seat and placing a hand on her knee. “You don’t have to do any of that, Shepard. Hackett can just have someone else place the monument and find the dog tags. You don’t need to do anything you don’t need to.”

She nodded and covered his hand with her own, staring at them and tracing a scar on the back of Joker’s hand. “Yeah. I know. It’s just… maybe it’ll be helpful after all, you know? Get me some closure too.”

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean you have to do anything though. You do enough shit for Cerberus and the Alliance as it is.”

“Don’t I know it.” Shepard snorted and looked back up at Joker, eyes wandering his face as she searched for her words. “Um… Could you make a course for Alchera? I can at least take a look.”  _ Maybe it’ll stop the nightmares _ .

Joker nodded and reached up, messing with her hair and tugging some of it out of the tight ponytail she’d put it in. “Yeah, of course Commander. We’ll head there when you give the word.”

“Thanks Joker. I owe you one.”

Joker snorted and turned back toward the controls. “Yeah, well. Let’s just call it even.”

 

***

 

“Are you sure you want to go alone?” Joker’s voice came over the comm, and Shepard fought off the eye roll she knew he wouldn’t see. He’d asked her that far too many times for her liking since she’d gotten into the shuttle, though she understood the concern. She was going to the planet where she’d died, after all, without anyone at her side. Shepard had made Joker promise not to tell Garrus or Tali where she was going, because the last thing she needed was either of them hovering like she was fragile. Shepard was far from fragile, and all her missions thus far had only served to prove that. Sure, her friends were a great support system, but Tali was awful at pestering when she was worried, and now that she and Garrus were not-dating-but-dating, she knew he’d hover worse than Tali ever could. 

Shepard wasn’t sure she had the energy to deal with the two of them over Alchera of all things.

“I’m fine, Joker. I’ll be back on the Normandy before you can get Garrus away from his damn calibrations.”

Joker’s snort came over the line, and Shepard’s lips quirked up. “So you’ve got at least a full solar day. That’s definitely soon.”

“Just fly the damn ship, Moreau.”

Her shoulders sagged when she heard Joker laugh, and Shepard landed the shuttle on the most stable part of the land EDI had found not long later. It was like she was seeing a ghost as the Normandy bits and pieces came into focus, and despite the thermal heater in her suit, Shepard felt a chill run through her body. The shuttle door opened, and Shepard slowly made her way out onto the snowy Alchera surface, taking the sight in. To her left was a large fragment that clearly spelled out  _ SSV NORMANDY _ in bold white letters, the metal rusted from two years of exposure to the elements. Her feet led her to the metal, and Shepard stared for a long moment before she went back and grabbed the monument to place. The little figure of the Normandy flying almost seemed to mock the destroyed spacecraft, because it would never fly again, but Shepard refused to think along those lines any further. The monument was to commemorate the crew they’d lost to the Collectors that day, not to mock them.

In a way, Shepard felt like it was there to commemorate who she’d been too. She was far from the same commander that had led the chase after Saren two years prior. 

The gleam of metal caught her gaze, flashing against her eyes as she moved, and Shepard made her way toward the piece of the ship to dig at the snow. A bit of effort revealed a dog tag from one of the crew, and her mind flashed to the latter part of Hackett’s email.

_ There are still 20 crew members unaccounted for from the attack on the Normandy. If you find any signs of these lost crewmen, we ask that you report to the Alliance so that those heroes' families might find some closure. _

Before she realized it, Shepard was scooping the dog tag up into her hand and holding it with a tight grasp, as if afraid the wind and snow will take it away again. Nineteen more. She stood and made her way around the planet, looking for each and every dog tag that she could catch sight of and grabbing it before she could lose sight of it. Some were hidden under crates, and the sound of gun shots disturbed the silence of Alchera’s surface as she broke each crate for a dog tag. Vaguely, she could hear Joker’s voice over her comm, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She tuned everything out but the dog tags. She had to get all twenty.

Her search became frantic, and the dog tags became harder to find. Bits of her old ship were thrown aside as she reached for each of them, almost breaking the chain of one that was caught on a shard of metal and nearly panicking when she realized it. She’d get them back to the Normandy and polish them up for the families of those she couldn’t save, those she couldn’t bring back to life like she had been. The guilt gnawed at her stomach, and her breathing picked up as she raced around the planet. She couldn’t save them like she’d been saved, but each of those crew members deserved a second chance at life far more than she ever had. Cerberus hadn’t seemed to think so, though, and her panic mixed with rage. Fucking Cerberus playing god. Who gave them the right? Who gave--

There, in the corner of one of the snowy pathways, sat a broken N7 helmet, and time seemed to stand still.

Shepard’s steps turned slow as she made her way toward the helmet, staring at the cracked casing that had held her head together enough to let her live once again. Despite the wear and tear, the helmet still bore the N7 label proudly, and Shepard fell to her knees, the dog tags she’d so desperately been collecting falling to the side. Her hands reached and grabbed the helmet, taking enough of her focus that she didn’t hear the second Normandy shuttle land planetside. All she could hear was the sound of her suffocating as she reached for her O2 line, trying to seal the crack in it with her hand, and all she could see was the sight of the Normandy exploding around her while the escape pods got most of her crew away from the blow.

“Shepard.”

Shepard’s hands grew tighter on the helmet, and she turned around quickly to the sight of Garrus and Tali at either side of her. When had they gotten there? She fell onto her butt and just stared, slowly shaking her head and staring down at the helmet. 

“I thought I told Joker to let me handle this.”

“Yes, but that was before he heard you hyperventilating over the comm line,” Garrus said dryly, kneeling down awkwardly at her side while Tali reached and grabbed the dog tags to pocket. Shepard’s eyes went wide when she grabbed them, and the panic in her eyes must have been evident enough because the quarian reached over and touched her shoulders.

“I’m just putting them away, Shepard,” she said gently. “So we don’t lose any. How many did you get?”

“... twenty.” Shepard looked back at the helmet and let herself sag in defeat, leaning against Garrus and closing her eyes. Though she couldn’t feel him through their suits, his presence alone was enough to be comforting and calm her down slowly. Both of their presences were enough. Why had she come down here alone?

“Did you want to talk about it?” Garrus asked, and Shepard shook her head as she looked back at her surroundings. In her flurry of movement, she’d hardly had a moment to actually look at everything. She stood up instead and waited for her friends to do the same before moving again, reaching and taking Garrus’ hand in her own. The turian gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and Shepard smiled weakly as she led the two of them along. There was the CIC; there was the main battery; there was the gunnery station; there was Kaidan’s favorite haunt. There was…

“Holy shit. It survived.”

Standing in all its glory was the M-35 Mako, brinigng the first real smile to Shepard’s face. It only grew when Garrus and Tali groaned, Tali shaking her head and holding a hand up. 

“Kee’lah, I can’t look at that thing without feeling sick. I thought you would’ve learned to drive it by the time we caught up to Saren, Shepard.”

“Hey, I’d like to see either of you drive that thing well.”

“ _ Well _ ,” Garrus drawled. “You let me drive it that one time when you decided to take the guns from Ashley. I’d like to say I drove the Mako pretty spectacularly.”

“I couldn’t even hit the fucking Colossus shooting at us while you drove, Vakarian.” Shepard snorted and Tali laughed, Garrus grumbling under his breath about bad drivers. Shepard looked back to the Mako and took a step forward, pressing a hand to the side of it. “Think we can salvage it?”

“Spirits, I hope not.” Garrus shook his head and held his hands up in defeat. “Do you really want to make your new crew sick from your driving too?”

“I like to think I drove the Hammerhead just fine, thank you. If they can survive that, they can survive the Mako.”

“You say that now,” Tali chimed in. “Just wait until a whole new wave of complaints start rolling in. I hope Cerberus has HR for their sakes.”

Shepard laughed again, keeping herself between the two of them while they toured the rest of the wreckage. Joker was right, she realized. She shouldn’t have come down to Alchera alone. That had only lead to a disaster, and even with her two best friends at her side Shepard still felt the prickle of panic at the edge of her nerves.

 

***

 

After dealing with Miranda’s complaints about the Mako’s sudden residence aboard the new Normandy, Shepard made her way to her cabin to get some privacy from the crew and the day’s events. She was slowly trusting her new crew, admittedly, but not enough to confide in them about her nightmares and her past. Alchera covered both of those categories, and Shepard recited each name engraved on the twenty dog tags as she polished them up for shipment to the Alliance Navy. She refused to forget any of them and the sacrifice they made. A knock at her door startled her from her thoughts, and Shepard looked up with a nod to the camera in the corner of her room. EDI understood her gesture and let her guest in, Garrus striding through the cabin like he owned the place and sitting at her side.

“Feeling better?”

“Guess you could say that.” Shepard looked back at dog tag number fifteen--Draven, Talitha--and finished cleaning it up, recording the name and setting the dog tag down. “I’m not about to suffocate if that’s what you’re asking.”

The joke fell flat, and Shepard sighed as she turned to look at Garrus fully. He was staring at the cleaned dog tags, talon adjusting one of the chains to straighten it out with the rest of them, and his mandibles flared in what Shepard thought was resignation. She reached over and covered his hand with hers, wrapping their fingers together when he stopped messing with the chains and bringing their hands into her lap. Garrus looked up at Shepard and squeezed her hand.

“You should’ve asked Tali or I to go down with you,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I know. I just… I died alone. I’ve dealt with my nightmares alone. I came back to life alone.” She looked away. “It just felt right to do this alone as well. Complete a pattern, I guess. It’s hard to explain.”

A talon touched her chin, and Garrus moved her head until his forehead was touching hers. Shepard relaxed at the familiar touch, moving closer to him and shifting so her face was against his neck. Garrus’ talons moved to rub lightly against her back, tracing patterns there and helping her relax.

“Alright,” he finally said. “But you’re not alone anymore. You never were, honestly, but it’s taking you a while to see that.”

“I could’ve said the same thing for you.”

“Yeah, I guess you could’ve,” he laughed. “But I eventually depended on people, Shepard. Even if you can’t trust the rest of the crew entirely, you’ve got Tali, and Joker, and Chakwas, and me. We’re here for you.”

Shepard smiled and nodded, leaning up to press a kiss to Garrus’ scarred mandible. “Thank you, Garrus. That means a lot.”

“Well, maybe I’ve got some romantic skills after all,” he mused, holding Shepard closer. She chuckled and wrapped her arm around his waist, finally letting herself relax. She wasn’t alone anymore, she had to remember that. Yes, she was alive, but Shepard wouldn’t let those who died have their deaths be in vain. She’d live her second chance at life for those who couldn’t live out the rest of their own, and--with any luck--do right by them. After all, all Shepard could do was hope.


End file.
